Sports
Football officials, coaches detained in match fixing scandalPosted by Joel Martinsen on Thursday, January 21, 2010 at 4:23 PM
Two senior officials of the Chinese Football Association have been detained by police in connection to a match-fixing scandal. Soccer News ran its report directly on the front page under the matter-of-fact headline "Investigators take in Nan Yong." Also detained was CFA vice-president Yang Yimin. Nan and Yang were questioned by investigators on January 15 and subsequently taken into custody. Professional football in China has long been plagued by bribery and corruption, and authorities have been cracking down over the past two months. Late last November, sixteen people, including players, coaches, and officials, were arrested. And earlier this month, the State Council established a supervisory committee to spearhead the fight against football corruption. Ironically, Yang Yimin was the CFA official who spoke about the committee to the media, as in this Global Times report:
A Soccer News sub-head also notes that Jia Xiuquan, the former coach of Shanghai's Shenhua squad, has "disappeared." Jia is the most prominent coach to be ensnared in the current anti-corruption campaign. Details are still a little fuzzy. The Yangtse Evening Post had a slightly different take on the situation in its snazzier front-page layout: Nan Yong and Yang Yimin are both "missing," while Jia Xiuquan (identified as former coach of the national under-17 team) has been detained by investigators. Other reports, including an article in the China Daily, add Zhang Jianqiang, an official "formerly in charge of referee arrangements [who] now oversees women's soccer at the CFA," to the list of those detained. Links and Sources
|
Warning: include(/home/danwei/webapps/htdocs/sidebarA.inc): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/laodanwei/www/www/sports/soccer_scandal.php on line 210 Warning: include(): Failed opening '/home/danwei/webapps/htdocs/sidebarA.inc' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/local/php74/lib/php') in /home/laodanwei/www/www/sports/soccer_scandal.php on line 210 Warning: include(/home/danwei/webapps/htdocs/sidebarB.inc): failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /home/laodanwei/www/www/sports/soccer_scandal.php on line 216 Warning: include(): Failed opening '/home/danwei/webapps/htdocs/sidebarB.inc' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/local/php74/lib/php') in /home/laodanwei/www/www/sports/soccer_scandal.php on line 216 |
Comments on Football officials, coaches detained in match fixing scandal
I was at CFA all afternoon today. The first floor was a crush of journalists from various media outlets. My friends and colleagues are privy to different bits of information, but they all agree that this may be the worst scandal ever to hit Chinese sport. One even suggested that it could be the biggest scandal in the history of sport. It will be interesting to follow developments in the days and weeks to come.
I still quite like the following final paragraph from this article in yesterday's 体坛周报 in which the author, looking over his shoulder at the CFA headquarters building as it turns slightly reddish in the sunset, compares himself to "Crazy Charlie" (疯子查理) from the recent disaster film *2012*. End of days. The CFA as an apocalyptic Yellowstone. Great stuff.
2010年1月19日下午5点40分,走出东玖大厦,记者回头望了望身后高悬的中国足协的牌匾,忽然一阵恍惚……夕阳中,眼前的这座大楼仿佛变为了电影《2012》中的黄石公园,而记者则是那个在末日侵袭前蹲守山顶等待火山岩浆喷薄而出的疯子查理。 link
Much more dramatic and sex-fueled when it's a sport in the fray rather than CCP officials' daily siphoning of untold billions and depriving the average Wang of his kid's education, public services, safe food, etc.
Interesting interview w/ Li Chengpeng 李承鹏, author of *The Inside Story of Chinese Football* (中国足球内幕) in this week's issue of 南方周末. Li's blog is worth a look too--very funny. (interview) (Li's blog)
The word from friends at CFA today is that former CFA head Xie Yalong 谢亚龙 has been arrested. Big, big news. And secret. No press coverage yet.
Wow. Thanks for the tip.